The FBI never asked for access to DNC computers, but still alleged ‘Russian hacking’

(NationalSentinel) Despite the fact that the FBI has insisted in a joint report with the Department of Homeland Security that ‘Russia hacked the U.S. election,’ the nation’s top domestic law enforcement agency never even asked the Democratic National Committee for access to services they say were hacked.

Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,”Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

Instead, the FBI relied on the word a private cyber security contractor, CrowdStrike, which allegedly said in May that Russia-linked hackers had penetrated DNC servers.

Still, for the FBI to make such a bold claim, and with all of the resources available to it and the intelligence community writ large, why would a decision be made at the highest levels not to have FBI cyberforensics experts take a look at the evidence themselves?

The federal government contracts out a lot of its work, but with the stakes this high–sanctioning a nuclear-armed global power–it seems prudent that the FBI would want to be doubly certain of its claims before making any recommendations to the president.